The present invention relates to a reshaping process for structural components made of ductile, particularly metallic, materials, and particularly to the control of such a process.
For a number of purposes, semifinished objects or structural components are deformed beyond their elastic limit under the influence of deforming forces during the course of their manufacture so that, in addition to cold solidification of the material a reshaping takes place with a permanent change in geometry. For example, during the so-called calibrating of chains, the chains are stretched under load, the purpose being to stretch the chain or chain section, respectively, which is to be calibrated to a given final dimension, which final dimension is to be attained for a chain not under load. Based on the elasticity of the material, or of the component "chain", the stretching would initially have to extend beyond the given final dimension, with maximum "force" or maximum strain, and then it would be necessary to check, once the load is removed, whether the desired final dimension has been attained.
The drawback of this procedure is that the desired stretching result cannot be used directly, as a parameter in the stretching process but the stretching is always effected either at a preselected maximum force or to a preselected maximum stretched length, so that fluctuations in the characteristics of the material or in the dimensions of the material may produce stretching states which, after purely elastic relaxation, will not result dependably, reproducibly and with sufficient accuracy in the desired calibrated length. It may become necessary to repeat the stretching process at least once for all or some of the chain sections in order to arrive at the desired final dimension, the difficulty then being the maintenance of reproducible values. Added to these drawbacks in the reshaping process itself is the added expense for time and personnel.